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The Chinese Spring Festival travel rush, which is known as the largest annual human migration in the world, began on Thursday morning.

Chinese New Year, one of the country's most significant festivals, is now just two weeks away, with the stampede signalling the start of a travel season that sees migrant workers, college students and regular company employees return home to their families.

Official statistics have projected that the number of passenger journeys taken during the next 40 days will hit 2.98 billion, with 390 million of them made on the country's railway network - an increase of 8.8 percent compared to the same period in 2017.

To counter the high volume of road traffic, the China Railway Corporation (CRC) plans to add an extra 576 trains to its system before the festival and a further 665 in its immediate aftermath, The Paper reports.

This means the average number of trains on China's tracks will increase by an average of 15 percent throughout this period.

The CRC has also improved the performance of its '12306' online ticket sales app by simplifying the buying procedure, increasing the maximum number of daily tickets available, from 10 million to 15 million, and introducing improved security technology.

The first day of the Year of the Dog falls on February 16 this year. Celebrations the traditionally continue for a further 15 days, culminating in the Lantern Festival on March 2.

Chi Dehua
has been a staff editor at GBTIMES since 2013. She covers foreign affairs, business and culture.